Introducing Scoir

Last month, I had the pleasure of introducing the Class of 2020 to our new online college advising platform, Scoir.

Pronounced "Score," Scoir is going to replace Naviance as our primary online college application organization tool. I've been using Naviance since I joined the school ten years ago, so this change is both significant and exciting.

There are quite a few factors that lead to this change. I'll describe a few below:

• Scoir is free for schools. Alternatively, Naviance has almost tripled in cost without tripling the functionality that our school uses. This change will save the PTA a significant amount of money without losing any of the key features that are the most useful for students and their parents/guardians. This includes historical acceptance data for our school. 
• Scoir graphs (also known as scattergrams) combine ACT and SAT data onto one screen. I've literally been begging Naviance to institute this change for a decade and it never happened. Scoir recognizes how necessary this is and their graphs combine everything into one. Naviance's approach to graphs was totally user-unfriendly (and in some cases mis-leading). I'm thrilled to be able to now provide students more complete, accurate, and robust data.
• Scoir allows students to keep a 'notebook' with their thoughts and reflections about school tours and visits. They can even upload photos to store notes and images of things that struck them about the school. This will be very useful during supplemental essay and interview season. I hope students take advantage of this feature. 
• While this impacts students much less than it impacts me, please know that the level of quality customer service provided by Naviance was abysmal. Like picture the basement, then go a few floors below that. That was Naviance customer service/user experience. In recent years they have opted to roll out new features in inopportune times, experienced outages during peak periods, and remove functions even though they were popular with school counselors. Alternatively, my experience with Scoir has been very positive. Their staff is personable, responsive, and open to feedback. The site is definitely not perfect and is absolutely still in a growth phase, but I'm optimistic about the future and excited to be using their platform. 

To learn more about Scoir click here

As always, students get their individual accounts at the kickoff during Regents week of their Junior year. Parents/guardians are also invited to have accounts at that time.